1635_ The Eastern Front - Eric Flint [134]
And sewers.
"You think my apartment smelled bad, Minnie? How d'you like the aroma out in the streets here? Should I open the window to remind you?"
"Don't rub it in," said Denise. "Besides, I bet the rain's washed most of it away by now."
"Yeah, I bet it has—right into the river. Where we get our water from. Can we say ‘typhus,' girls?"
"She's going to keep rubbing it in, isn't she?" said Minnie.
Denise whooped and swept up the pile of cards on the cushion. Apparently, she'd won something. A hand? A game? A trick? Who knew?
Noelle's grandmother had warned her that cards were an instrument of the devil. Here, she figured, was living proof.
Chapter 34
The Warta river, between Gorzów and Poznań
The reports had been accurate. Hidden within a small grove of trees, Lukasz Opalinski looked onto the Warta. Just as the Cossacks had said, there on the road running by the river was one of the huge American war machines. An "APC," it was called, whatever that meant. Lukasz had forgotten to ask Jozef Wojtowicz what the initials stood for.
The thing was enormous, even bigger than Lukasz remembered from the battle of Zwenkau. It looked every bit as terrifying, too.
Or would have, had there not been one critical difference. At Zwenkau, the APCs had been moving almost as fast as horses. Faster, on good terrain. This APC wasn't moving at all. The rain-soaked road had given way as it passed, and the machine was now stuck.
It must have slid down and sidewise, Lukasz figured. The rear axle and its grotesquely fat wheels—those were called "tires," if he was remembering Jozef's account correctly—were off the road entirely, hanging out over the river.
Hanging into the river now, almost. The swollen waters of the Warta were not more than a foot below the tires. What was worse, those same swollen and rushing waters would be undercutting the riverbank. Before too much longer—a day, perhaps; not more than two—the APC would fall completely into the river.
Judging from the expressions on the faces of the machine's crew, who were standing around staring at the APC, they'd come to the same conclusion. They had placed ropes to tether the machine, but eventually those ropes would give way.
Judging from the marks in the mud, they'd tried to use those same ropes to haul the APC to safety.
With no success, obviously. All they had at their disposal were a half dozen horses, from what Lukasz could see. That wasn't nearly enough in the way of draft power to move something as immensely heavy as the war machine. On a dry, flat road, perhaps. But not here, in this pouring rain, on this soil.
No, for this you needed oxen. Lots of oxen.
Happily, since Lukasz had learned from Koniecpolski to trust the reports of Cossack scouts, if not the Cossacks themselves, he had brought oxen with him. He'd expropriated them from a nearby landowner, who'd objected at first but then seen his Polish duty after Opalinski pointed out that with as many Cossacks as he had with him he could easily just rustle the cattle. A process which, sadly—Cossacks being Cossacks—could get out of hand and result in the unfortunate demise of the landowner and his family and retainers after the most hideous travails along with the crops destroyed, the livestock slaughtered, the house burnt to the ground, the flowers in the meadows trampled, the . . .
The oxen weren't with him any longer, of course. They were now at least five or six miles back, and moving slowly as oxen always did. But nobody was going to be moving quickly here, so much was obvious.
This was a backwater in the war, now. The armies had passed on to the south. Gustav Adolf must have left this APC behind, secure in the knowledge that it was too far behind the lines to be at risk. Even if a passing unit of Poles did stumble across it, what could they do besides slaughter the crew and the soldiers he'd left as guards?
There weren't many of those soldiers. Just a platoon, large enough to frighten away bandits.
There was something profoundly satisfying to Lukasz